Three Dealers Go on the Record in Advance of the Hirst Auction

Bloomberg has three comments on the upcoming auction. White Cube’s Jay Jopling denies there is a mountain of unsold works:

“The appetite for Damien’s art,” Jay Jopling, White Cube’s owner, said in the statement, “is such that we never have enough and I’m always keen to have as much work on consignment as possible.” The market for Hirst was strong and suggestions to the contrary were based on “redundant documents.”

Robert Sandelson suggests Hirst is making an end run around his galleries:

“Sotheby’s auction is payback time for Damien,” said London dealer Robert Sandelson, who in the summer of 2006 hosted a selling exhibition of Hirst works acquired through secondary sources. “He’s saying to the dealers, `If you can’t sell these pieces, I’ll find someone who can,”’ said Sandelson in an interview.

But Kenny Schachter thinks everybody will benefit from the sale:

“Any revelations about unsold works shouldn’t affect the auction,” said the London-based dealer Kenny Schachter, who was on the guest-list for Sotheby’s preview at the Hamptons. “Hirst and Sotheby’s are looking for new collectors for this material. In the end it could help sell some of the dealers’ inventory — if it goes well.”

Hirst’s Dealer Denies `Mountain’ of Unsold Works Before Auction (Bloomberg)

Interview with Guy Bennett

In our continuing effort to de-mystify the art market and make the auction houses more accessible, we bring you this interview with Christie’s Guy Bennett (along with some video excerpts.)

First, a little background. Guy Bennett is Senior Vice President, International Co-Head of Impressionist and Modern Art. In addition to overseeing the day to day running of the department worldwide, he is responsible for the daily management, marketing and promotion of Christie’s sales of Impressionist and Modern Art in New York. And, of course, it’s his job to find the right properties to sell at the right time. He headed the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale in November 2006 which totaled $491.5 million, making it the most valuable auction ever. The next year, he organized the second most valuable sale totaling $396 million in November 2007.

In 2008, Bennett landed the Miller Collection, which included Monet’s spectacular “Le bassin aux nymphéas” which sold for $80.4 million in London in June, doubling the artist’s previous record set a month earlier when Bennett had orchestrated the sale of Monet’s “Le Pont du chemin de fer à Argenteuil” in New York which sold for $41.5 million. (The interview, with video, after the jump.) Read the rest of this entry »

Jacob Rothschild lets the Economist browse among his acquisitions:

The first artist he collected was an idiosyncratic Swiss-Italian sculptor, Giacometti. He has been collecting ever since, not just for the walls of his sitting rooms, but for Spencer House in St James’s, London, which he helped to restore (he lent a Panini and a Romney from his own collection), and for Waddesdon Manor, the vast pile in Buckinghamshire, which he inherited from an aunt. Read the rest of this entry »

The Wall Street Journal has this think piece on the meaning the Hirst auction for the art market. And The Art Newspaper claims to have an inventory of White Cube’s unsold stock totaling £100 million.

Melik Kaylan’s tart views in the WSJ spare no one. Dealers are haughty but also panderers; Hirst is creature of the vulgar new money being made in Russia, China and the Gulf States; and art is for social climbers.

Because Sotheby’s and Christie’s appear to operate a species of global commodities exchange, with dates and prices instantly disclosed on the Internet, it all feels so much more transparent to, say, a new Chinese millionaire. In the first place, there will be a local office near him co-headed by a Chinese speaker who understands the millionaire’s social sensitivities — so much more pleasant than having to kow-tow to a self-important New York or London gallerist. It puts an end to a long era in which superior dealers could treat outsider clients with the snooty hauteur of a French waiter. Above all, though, the auction houses’ relative transparency — the fact that prices are set and transactions occur out in the open, for all to see — will appeal to the international new money crowd that knows plenty about how money and markets work.

Dealers have always offered clients a higher degree of discretion than the public space of an auction ever can. That has traditionally been their great asset. But let’s be candid: Nobody in Dubai or Shanghai wants a pickled cow to gaze at musingly in solitude for the sheer beauty of its hindquarters. When today’s clients buy such wares, privacy is the last thing on their minds.

The important question is whether the Hirst sale is truly driven by new buyers seeking access to his work that can’t be satisfied by his dealers. Sotheby’s is sending the works to New York (well, the Hamptons) and New Delhi but not to Dubai or Shanghai. But The Art Newspaper turns the equation around by suggesting that Hirst’s volume of production has overflowed what his dealers can place:

the scale of his output requires him to find a steady stream of new buyers; the global reach of the auction house will have proved decisive. “Sotheby’s promotion is not directed at existing collectors. They are targeting new buyers, especially in parts of the world which have only recently started collecting contemporary art,” says a trade source

The Times also picks up the Art Newspaper’s claims and wraps up the whole package including the shows in Bridgehampton and New Delhi:

This will be Hirst’s first show in India. “Until now Indian collectors have primarily shown interest in art from their own culture,” said Oliver Barker, senior international specialist at Sotheby’s. “Now they are thinking global.”

Hirst’s Marketing End Run (Wall Street Journal)

Revealed: the Art Damien Hirst Failed to Sell (The Art Newspaper)

200 Unsold Hirst Works Looking for An Owner at Sotheby’s (The Times of London)

These days you’re not a serious emerging market unless you have a serious emerging art market star. Indonesia nominates I Nyoman Masriadi. Here’s Bloomberg on his prospects in the upcoming Asian contemporary sales in Hong Kong and his first solo show in Singapore:

In the past two years, Masriadi, 35, has become a poster boy for Indonesian contemporary art. Christie’s International sold his painting “Used to Being Stripped,” depicting one of his trademark stocky black figures, for HK$4.2 million ($538,000) in May in Hong Kong, an auction record for Southeast Asian art. In an Indonesian sale in 2006, his “Angels” was offered for 10 million rupiah ($1,088) with no takers.

“Masriadi is one of the vanguards for Southeast Asian Contemporary,” said Mok Kim Chuan, Sotheby’s head of department for Southeast Asian paintings. “His prices have been skyrocketing.”

( . . . )

“Many regard him as Indonesia’s answer to Chinese contemporary art,” said Michael Koh, chief executive officer of Singapore’s National Heritage Board, which hosts the 8Q show. “He’s hot and never had a solo show, so it’s quite groundbreaking for us.”

The rapid rise of Indonesian artists and the slump in global financial markets have prompted some collectors and critics to suggest that art prices may fall.

That will be tested in October, when Masriadi’s new work and his 4.5-meter-wide triptych “The Man From Bantul — The Final Round” from 2000 go under the hammer at Sotheby’s first evening sale of Asian art in Hong Kong. “Bantul” has a top estimate of HK$1.5 million ($192,000).

But Masriadi is not the only Indonesian artist gaining ground. Newsweek offers its own guide to the boom in South East Asian painters:

The pace of Masriadi’s rise has been unusual but not unique in the region. The Indonesians Rudi Mantofani, Agus Suwage and Handiwirman Saputra have also done very well at recent auctions, though the prices paid for the work of Mantofani, the second highest-paid Indonesian, remain well behind Masriadi’s. Artists in Thailand and Malaysia are also enjoying a boom. Their success reflects collectors’ rising appetite for Southeast Asian work, which still tends to go for a fraction of the price of Chinese art. Now the boom is creating new challenges for museums in the region, which can no longer afford many of the suddenly popular artists.

Indonesia Artist Masriadi Slays Ogres, Cuts Batman Down to Size (Bloomberg)

Turning Black to Cash (Newsweek)

A Thin-Skinned Government vs. an Overflowing Art Market

The New York Times reported yesterday that the Asia Society had been blind-sided by the Chinese governments slow-playing their hand on a loan of art from the Revolution, 1950-1970. With their spotless control of the Olympics, the Chinese goverment’s actions should come as no surprise even if one has to chuckle at the trick of reneging on a promised loan at the last minute to sabotage the exhibit:

Despite the Chinese government’s decision, Asia Society has decided to proceed with the show by seeking loans from private collectors.

The approach of the Olympics seemed to have been the deal breaker. “Initially, they said, ‘Any loans you want; no problem,’ ” said Vishakha N. Desai, the society’s president. “The closer it got to the Olympics, they changed their policy.” Read the rest of this entry »

Buying Controversial Art Gets Easier with Time

LACMA’s long history with Ed Kienholz has been filled with controversy–but when it organized a recent $1 million acquisition, no one made a peep. The sculpture in question, The Illegal Operation, (left) about abortion had interest from the Tate. The LA Times speculates that shock art has lost some of it’s impact:

But times have changed. So have sensitivities to “shocking” art as museum audiences have become accustomed to Paul McCarthy’s scatological installations and Damien Hirst’s vitrines of dead animals preserved in formaldehyde. And LACMA’s new acquisition has been burnished by civic pride and art historical gravitas. The artist, who died in 1994, at age 66, established himself in Los Angeles before developing an international reputation. “The Illegal Operation” is widely regarded as a seminal early piece by a giant in the field of socially critical sculpture.

The Times leaves off the fact that abortion–especially this particulary gruesome type of abortion–is no longer the divisive and emotional issue it once was. The sculpture is longer shocking because it depicts an historical outrage instead of a present-day outrage.

LACMA lands Ed Kienholz’s ‘The Illegal Operation’ (Los Angeles Times)

The Tate’s Director Stirs A Little More Controversy

Fresh on the heels of the tut-tutting over his role advising Dasha Zhukova and the potential conflict posed, Sir Nicholas Serota gets the British papers rolling on the subject of his re-appointment. It seems the Prime Minister never signed off on the Tate boards decision to make the 62-year-old’s job permanent. The controversy merely gives some of Sir Nicholas’s opponents an opportunity to vent. Nonetheless, Serota’s legacy, as this brief summary suggests, is pretty one-sided: Read the rest of this entry »

Asian Contemporary Art Market Gravitates Toward Hong Kong

Sotheby’s announced this week (pdf) that it will be consolidating its Asian Contemporary art auctions in Hong Kong next year. The news will not surprise anyone who saw the dramatic difference in results between the sales of Chinese Contemporary art in New York and Hong Kong last Spring. Hong Kong is clearly the center of market.

And Quick Way to Bone Up on Contemporary Chinese Art

Meanwhile, Bloomberg runs this interview with Karen Smith, author of the now-updated Nine Lives profiling nine of China’s most influential contemporary artists. Though Smith doesn’t seem to share the auction houses’ enthusiasm for price as a measure of artistic merit: Read the rest of this entry »

Artforum Gives Us Scenes from the Gallery Opening

Artforum’s Philip Tinari filed this report (and took this picture of arrayed Pace Wildenstein worthies) from the opening of Pace’s new gallery in Beijing: Read the rest of this entry »